The President of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, asked this Tuesday (20), during his speech at the 77 th United Nations General Assembly, the end of the war “irrational” against drugs that, according to him, is destroying the Amazon rainforest and harming his country.
“I demand from here, from my wounded Latin America, an end to the irrational war on drugs. Reducing drug consumption doesn’t need wars, it needs us all to build a better society,” Petro said in his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly as Colombian president.
The left-wing ruler declared that “the war on drugs has failed” and that, furthermore, “the fight against the climate crisis has failed”.
“Do you want less drugs? Think less profit and more love. rational exercise of power. Don’t touch the beauty of my country with your poisons, help us, without hypocrisy, to save the Amazon rainforest to save the life of humanity on the planet”, ac
During his speech, the Colombian president stated that “the forest that is being saved is at the same time destroyed” and gave as an example the use of the herbicide glyphosate to eradicate illegal plantations in Colombia.
“To destroy the coca plant, they throw poisons, mass glyphosate that runs through the waters, arrest their planters and imprison them. For destroying or possessing the coca leaf, one million Latin Americans are murdered and two million Afro-descendants are imprisoned in North America”, he detailed.
In this sense, Petro described as a “hypocrite”. the discourse of developed countries to save the Amazon, which “burns while you make war and play with it”.
“When actions were most necessary, when discourses were no longer useful, when it was essential deposit money in the funds to save humanity, when it was necessary to get rid of coal and oil as quickly as possible, they invented one war and another and another. They invaded Ukraine, but also Iraq, Libya and Syria. They invaded in the name of oil and gas”, he criticized.
Petro also highlighted that “the climate disaster will kill hundreds of millions of people” and that its main cause is “capital”, as well as “the logic of relating to each other to consume more and more, produce more and more, and so that some earn more and more.”
The Colombian president proposed that resources from the international community be used to save the forest, in a kind of exchange of “debt for life, for nature”.
“If you do not have the capacity to finance the fund for the revitalization of forests, it is more important to allocate money to weapons than to for life, so reduce the external debt to free up our own budgetary spaces and with them carry out the task of saving humanity and life on the planet. We can do it ourselves, if you don’t want to”, he emphasized.
